"'Hymns That Adore Him': The Baptized Life within Your Vocation" (Paul Gerhardt sermon series)

"'Hymns That Adore Him': The Baptized Life within Your Vocation"
(Sermon series on "The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt")

On March 12, 1607, in a little village near Wittenberg, Germany, Paul Gerhardt was born. As we approach the 400th anniversary of his birth in less than two weeks, and throughout this year, celebrations are being held in his honor literally around the world: a concert in St. Louis; a conference in St. Catharines, Ontario; the list goes on and on. In Germany, the Gerhardt jubilee is a very big deal. But this is nothing new over there. For many years there have been schools, churches, monuments, statues, paintings, all dedicated in honor of Paul Gerhardt.

So who was this Paul Gerhardt? Maybe you have never heard the name. But I’m sure you have heard his words. You see, Paul Gerhardt was one of the greatest hymn writers in the history of the Christian church. Not a Sunday goes by that his hymns are not sung in churches throughout the world. Pious Christians have memorized his lyrics and sung them in their homes and fields; they have prayed them at bedtime and on their deathbeds.

Particularly in the Lutheran church are the hymns of Paul Gerhardt so highly prized. Gerhardt was a Lutheran pastor, and he is often called, “the sweet singer of Lutheranism.” Our synod’s new “Lutheran Service Book” contains 16 Gerhardt hymns, twelve of which we’re singing during this midweek Lenten series. The other four hymns include one for Easter and three for Christmas. Gerhardt takes us with Jesus through the church year: from Advent, “O Lord How Shall I Meet You”; to Christmas, “Come, Your Hearts and Voices Raising”; to Holy Week, “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth”; to Easter, “Awake, My Heart, with Gladness.” Gerhardt expresses the emotions and the experience of the individual believer: “Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me”; “Rejoice, My Heart, Be Glad and Sing.” He knows what it is as a Christian to face the sorrows and sufferings of this life: “Entrust Your Days and Burdens”; “Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me.” He delights in God’s gift of nature and trusts in the loving care of the heavenly Father: “Evening and Morning”; “Now Rest beneath Night’s Shadow.” For all these reasons the hymns of Paul Gerhardt are cherished as a treasure of Christian devotion.

So that’s why we’re doing this series this Lent: Not to focus on Paul Gerhardt per se, but to use his life and his hymns as a window into the life of Christian devotion, which is ultimately to fix our gaze upon our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Gerhardt’s hymns and Gerhardt himself help us do that. Tonight we begin with the theme, “‘Hymns That Adore Him’: The Baptized Life within Your Vocation.” As God’s baptized children, how do we use the gifts and abilities God has given us for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor, within our various callings in life?

Paul Gerhardt’s life gives us an example of how that happens. It begins with the natural gifts God gave you and the training and education you receive as a child. In Gerhardt’s case, he received a good schooling that prepared him well for what would follow in his life. As a schoolboy, he learned the Bible and the Catechism. He sang in the choir. He studied, among other things, Latin and poetry. By the time he graduated from college, his report card read: “With good parts he showed diligence and obedience; his Latin composition is largely satisfactory; his poetical efforts in this language [that is, German] may be rated tolerable.” After college, Gerhardt then went off to study theology at the University of Wittenberg, where Luther had taught a century earlier.

What is your background? What training and education did you receive that prepared you for what you can be doing now? Maybe you didn’t get such a good classical education as Gerhardt had. But you have learned the Bible and the Catechism to some extent, surely, and there is still time and opportunity for you to grow in these areas. I know as a pastor, I don’t feel I have ever “arrived.” There are always areas for me to grow in my depth of understanding the faith.

Well, after graduating from seminary and becoming a theological candidate, Paul Gerhardt spent a number of years, first in Wittenberg and then in Berlin, working as a teacher, a private tutor. During those years, though, he did not let his natural gifts and literary skills go to waste. He began to write poems, first for specific occasions and then for use as hymns in the church. He continued to write hymns as a pastor. All in all he wrote over 130 hymns during his lifetime.

Maybe you aren’t skilled as a writer and poet as Gerhardt was. That’s all right. There are many ways for us to serve God and the neighbor. What are ways you can serve, within your vocation? As we heard in the reading from Romans 12, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.” God has endowed us with a variety of talents within the body of Christ. That’s good. If we were all hymn writers, who would fix the electricity when it goes out? Who would play the organ or balance the checkbook? We need someone to make a pole for our processional cross, someone to teach Sunday School. We need people to go through the files and find membership records, to make visits to our shut-ins, to make chili for the soup supper, to give rides for the evening services. And that’s just service in the church, not to mention service in the community and in the home!

All service done out of faith in Christ and for the good of the neighbor is acceptable in God’s sight through the cleansing merits of Christ. You see, our spirit of serving God and neighbor often flags. Our zeal subsides. We fail to do the good we should do. We put our light under a bushel and we let our gifts go unused or underused. Even our best works are tinged with sin and selfishness. For these failings and shortcomings, for our lack of love and service, we need God’s forgiveness. We cannot live without it! But in Christ, through his cleansing merits, you and I are God’s forgiven children, freed up to serve and gifted with God’s good Spirit! How well Gerhardt expresses this sweet truth, in the hymn we just sang:

All Christians who have been baptized,
Who know the God of heaven,
And in whose daily life is prized
The name of Christ once given:
Consider now what God has done,
The gifts He gives to ev’ryone
Baptized into Christ Jesus!

In this hymn (never before translated into English, by the way), Gerhardt goes on to describe how all your sin was washed away and how “the water of your Baptism day” restored the image of God in you. In Baptism Christ’s sacrifice of his holy blood covers your sin and makes you righteous in God’s sight. This gift of Baptism goes on working throughout your life, empowering your efforts and refreshing your soul. Then Gerhardt concludes:

So use it well! You are made new--
In Christ a new creation!
As faithful Christians, live and do
Within your own vocation,
Until that day when you possess
His glorious robe of righteousness
Bestowed on you forever!

“So use it well!” Use this new baptismal life that God has given to you. Live according to this new identity of who you are in Christ, wherever God has placed you.

How has God gifted you, so that you can be of benefit to those around you? For Pastor Gerhardt, it was in writing hymns. But even if you can’t write hymns, you can certainly learn them and sing them. This is a good way for you to grow in a life of Christian devotion: singing hymns in the church, in the choir, in the home, in your family devotions. Maybe this year you can learn some of Gerhardt’s hymns by heart and sing them often. You will find that they lift your heart toward God and strengthen your faith in Christ. As we heard in the reading from Colossians 3: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

One hymn that lets “the word of Christ dwell in you richly” is the last hymn we will sing tonight, and we will sing it several times to close our services: “Now Rest beneath Night’s Shadow.” It expresses the quiet trust that the Christian places in God at the end of the day. This hymn may well be the most memorized of all Gerhardt’s hymns. For at the end of the day, and at the end of our life, it is not our efforts that will save us or keep us safe. At the end of the day, and at the end of our life, we must simply entrust ourselves in childlike faith to the tender care of our Savior. Stanza 4 of this hymn has been sung as a child’s bedtime prayer over many generations, and it is a beautiful prayer to pray no matter how old a child of God you may be.

Breit aus die Fluegel beide,
O Jesu, meine Freude,
Und nimm dein Kuechlein ein!
Will Satan mich verschlingen,
So lass die Englein singen:
Dies Kind soll unverletzet sein!

Lord Jesus, since You love me,
Now spread Your wings above me
And shield me from alarm.
Though Satan would devour me,
Let angel guards sing o’er me:
This child of God shall meet no harm.

In the fifth paragraph I wrote:

By the time he graduated from college, his report card read: “With good parts he showed diligence and obedience; his Latin composition is largely satisfactory; his poetical efforts in this language [that is, German] may be rated tolerable.”

I realized after I posted this that the little bracketed insertion I made, "[that is, German]" was incorrect. The report card was referring to Gerhardt's Latin poetry. So when I actually preached the sermon I took out the insertion and added this line:

Fortunately for us, as Gerhardt matured, his German poetry was more than “tolerable.”

Thanks for the ping.

I found the following by Mr. Gerhardt when rummaging around the net today:

Entrust your days and burdens
To God's most loving hand;
He cares for you while ruling
The sky, the sea, the land.
For he who guides the tempest
Along their thunderous ways
Will find for you a pathway
And guide you all your days. (LSB 754).
This was written in 1653, a mere five years after the Westphalian Peace, when Germany was still in ruins; when the country still mourned the loss of 20 to 30 percent of its population; when its agriculture, indeed its entire economy was destroyed; when peasants, Lutherans and Catholics alike, were still traumatized by the memory of having to drink gallons upon gallons of liquid manure called Schwedentrunk because it was forced down their throats with crude funnels by marauding Swedish soldiers.

Earlier today I also found the entire book of Sasse's Sacrament of the the Altar online. Here it is.

I have at least part of this in my book, The Lonely Path, but I just haven't gotten to it yet.

I'm taking a couple of classes after being away from the classroom for many years. One class is a philosphy class and we've been given the task of picking a philosopher and writing a paper on possible motivations and the effect of those on his work. I picked Soren Kierkegaard, so I've been trying to study his biography as well as his works and last night I read Practice Christianity and it hit me pretty hard. I really like him, though I know he's probably considered quite heterodox.

In this piece he speaks of the abasement of the Cross and in particular how those that opt for the lofty side or glory side of the story of the Cross have lost their sense of the wound or the offense of the Cross.

I'm not doing the piece justice touching on it so simply, but it is quite moving, and apart from Kierkegaard's heterodoxy, it seems impossible to me to argue that his thirst for Christ didn't consume him.

Thanks for the ping.

I found the following by Mr. Gerhardt when rummaging around the net today:

Entrust your days and burdens
To God's most loving hand;
He cares for you while ruling
The sky, the sea, the land.
For he who guides the tempest
Along their thunderous ways
Will find for you a pathway
And guide you all your days. (LSB 754).
This was written in 1653, a mere five years after the Westphalian Peace, when Germany was still in ruins; when the country still mourned the loss of 20 to 30 percent of its population; when its agriculture, indeed its entire economy was destroyed; when peasants, Lutherans and Catholics alike, were still traumatized by the memory of having to drink gallons upon gallons of liquid manure called Schwedentrunk because it was forced down their throats with crude funnels by marauding Swedish soldiers.

Earlier today I also found the entire book of Sasse's Sacrament of the the Altar online. Here it is.

I have at least part of this in my book, The Lonely Path, but I just haven't gotten to it yet.

In recent years the Festival of the Annunciation has grown increasingly important to me. Of course, most years this falls within Lent and it seems more than a bit odd to be thinking of events more associated with Advent and Christmas even as Holy Week approaches

Gerhardt's "O Lord, how shall I meet you?" includes a stanza that transcends the liturgical seasons and beautifully blends Incarnation and Passion:

Love caused your incarnation
Love brought you down to me
Your thirst for my salvation
Procured my liberty.
O Love beyond all telling
That caused you to embrace
In love all love excelling
Our lost and fallen race.

One other correction. I wrote:

In this hymn (never before translated into English. . . .

I since have learned that an English translation of Gerhardt's Du Volk, das du getaufet bist appeared in The American Lutheran Hymnal (1930):

Ye baptized people, one and all,
Who know your God in heaven,
Ye have received a holy call
To you Christ's name is given.
Forget ye not, but ponder well
The precious gifts no tongue can tell,
The Blessing of Baptism.

This is not to take away from the fine translation that now appears in the Lutheran Service Book. We enjoyed singing it at our midweek service the other night.

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